Hasta Pronto Cusco!

Perspective is a strange thing. The amazingly primitive Cusco airport that I hailed as my "introduction to the third world" just a month ago seemed strangely technologically advanced and westernized this afternoon when Ben and I returned to head home-after all there was a billboard for McDonalds right outside! And the "somewhat backwards" Lima airport seems now to be a perfect hub of technology and modernization. I am sitting in a Starbucks and could buy food at Papa Johns, McDonalds, or Duncan' Donuts. A month ago I would have criticized these restaurants as proof of a homogenous over dominant western culture, but right now I simply welcome the idea of hot cheap food that I know won't make me sick. I'm not sure that that is the change of perspective I expected from a month long mission trip to Peru, oh well.

In all seriousness, I know that my perspective has changed in grander and more profound ways. Honestly, could my eyes, which have gazed into the vacant ones of a shepherd boy left in complete isolation high in the Andes day after day or looked upon stray dogs and crippled desperate women along Cusco's narrow cobblestone streets, ever see the world in quite the same way again. I think that these new eyes may have been exactly what God intended for me to gain from this adventure. Through my experiences in Peru, both good and at times trying, I have learned to see the world and my place in it in a different light.

I now understand rather than simply know that people live in completely different ways than I do, for I have walked past a mud hovel high in the Andes and handed out paper gliders to children living there who have probably never seen an airplane, or taken a shower, or visited a doctor to receive a vaccination.

I now understand that other countries function quite differently from mine, for I have walked up and down the streets of Cusco discussing university strikes, government corruption, and the ordeal of gaining a visa with my Spanish professor.

I can now see more clearly that Christ is the light of the world for I have seen villages dark with hopelessness without him.

I now understand how much I need his light. These weeks alone with my brother in an uncomfortable foreign culture have shown me how much I need God's love, mercy and patience.

I now understand how truly small and incapable I am. The problems of the children at the project were too large for me to solve on my own. What were my corny games and broken Spanish to a hungry child with a broken home? I simply don't have the skills to affect real tangible changes in their lives.

I also understand now that none of us are capable of affecting real lasting change on our own. Only an incredibly capable God working through incapable people can bring real eternal change. I know this because I have seen him working through many people like me in Peru to change lives.

I know that I didn't change the world, or even a corner of it, while I was in Peru. The problems there are so big and my time there was so short. I will be happy if I made one of the kids at CORASON's week a bit happier or encouraged them a bit in their difficult lives, or if I made the load a bit lighter for the owners of the cafe, or brightened someone's day with some coffee and a smile. I may not have made much of a tangible change in Peru, but the change my time their has had on me may very well be eternal. The things I have seen there, the people I have met, and the truths I have learned will affect every decision I make. My eyes have been changed by what they have seen. They have been given a glimpse of God's complex world and his eternal plan. I doubt that they will ever be quite the same. For this I am truly grateful.

Gracias Cusco, and hasta pronto!